The Giants’ Country Boy in Short Sleeves

Perhaps an ability to overcome what were once prohibitive odds to make it in professional football, much less to a conference championship game at the Green Bay shrine known as Lambeau Field, has some symbolic connection to the postage-stamp Wisconsin town in which Rich Seubert grew up.

How can you not sustain belief when you hail from Rozellville, which as Seubert said, is “in the center of the state, where two highways meet a couple of dirt roads?”

Or about 90 minutes on the highway from where Seubert and the Giants will knock frozen helmets with the Packers on Sunday night, as they brave winter’s wrath for the right to bask in Super Bowl glory.

As N.F.L. commissioner, Pete Rozelle reshaped professional football as an unparalleled modern American sports growth industry and national television spectacle, in part by exercising the power of climate control. But Seubert, the Giants’ left guard, is something of a throwback to a more organic game, or at least the game we like to romanticize as one of survival as much as if not more than of skill.

While living in Rozellville, he attended high school in nearby Marshfield, part of a class of roughly 40. He was passed over for a scholarship by the state factory, the University of Wisconsin, settling for Western Illinois. He was not drafted in 2001 but became a starter for the Giants, only to have to reclaim his position after missing almost two years because of a fractured leg.

At 6 feet 3 inches and 310 pounds, with Popeye’s arms and a hearty, whiskered face, Seubert has the classic look of a country boy primed for trench warfare, in short sleeves, forecast be damned.

“How cold can it be?” he said. “Seven or 8 degrees? That’s pretty warm. I went home last February and it was minus 20 for a week straight.”

Home is where a hearty meal, especially the Friday night fish fry, could be had at the Buck-A-Neer Supper Club, a restaurant run by Seubert’s parents, Tom and Ann. A few miles away, still in Marathon County, Mark Tauscher was two years ahead of Seubert, though in another high school, on the way to becoming a star at Wisconsin and a starting offensive tackle for the Packers.

Tauscher may be living the ultimate instate football fantasy, but Seubert will not even admit to having ever been a Packers fan, and is not the least bit torn about his wish for Michael Strahan & Company on the defensive line to fillet and fry the state icon Brett Favre.

Photo

Credit
The New York Times

“Let’s just say that I watched the Packers; they were on television every week,” he said. “And growing up in Wisconsin, you’re going to go to Lambeau Field a few times.”

All Big Blue, no blue cheese, Seubert is the only Giant who hails from Wisconsin. Tauscher is his lone statemate on the Packers. But with all the talk about how the Giants are facing calamitous subzero temperatures factoring in the wind chill, you would think the majority of Packers had spent their youth on cross-country skis.

“Long as it’s not 78 on their side and zero on our side, who really cares about the weather?” Seubert said.

Well, other than Seubert, Tauscher, and possibly Favre, the Mississippian turned woolly mammoth, probably everyone. Scan the Green Bay roster, and it is not much different from the Giants’ or any other in a league laden with players from Florida, Texas, Southern California and other sun-drenched locales.

On Friday afternoon, on The New York Times’s Web site, a Play magazine article about games played in snow appeared under the heading, “As John Madden might say, ‘This is football.’ ” If that is the case, why has the sport worked so hard on the college and the professional levels to have its ultimate games played far away from partisan crowds and inclement conditions?

Photo

The Buck-A-Neer Supper Club in Rozellville is run by Rich Seuberts parents.Credit
Rose Theurer

It has been decades since the integration of the Southern college football programs gave rise to African-American skill-position dominance, fundamentally changing the way football was not only played, but also packaged.

“The game became more about offense and speed, and that’s not something you do well when you can’t feel your feet and you can’t cut,” Y. A. Tittle, the former Giants quarterback and insightful observer, said in a telephone interview. So as much as Tittle looks forward to the conference championships in cold (New England) and frigid (Green Bay) places, he agrees with the lords of football: the last game should always be about athletes, not elements.

“I’ll tell you that when we played in that really cold weather, it would get to the point where I wouldn’t care what the score was, I was just counting the seconds until it was over and we could get the heck out of there,” he said, if nothing else numbing our sense of historical football romance.

Ice Bowl II does not promise to be any more artful than it will be fun for the players. But under any circumstances, for the Giants, it is an opportunity no one saw coming, a chance to go forward by running the ball all the way to Arizona.

For all the understandable focus on Eli Manning, winning in the trenches, finding a way to stay old-school with Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw is probably the Giants’ best chance. Follow the leaders on the offensive line, especially Seubert of Rozellville, Wis., who knows the way to Lambeau Field and, above all, is a proven football survivor.

E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com

A version of this article appears in print on , on page SP4 of the New York edition with the headline: The Giants’ Country Boy in Short Sleeves. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe